One of my favorite audiophile doo-dads were wooden knobs being sold as upgrades to regular device knobs. They were super special wood with all sorts of magic properties and a bargain at hundreds of bucks.
I’ve had tinnitus since I was maybe 4 or 5 years old. A high end sound system is cool to look at, but wasted on me. Those $30 computer speakers are just fine.
The article isn’t clear on one thing : was it an analog or digital signal ?
The results are entirely unsurprising if the signal was digital. Also, I’d like to see a similar test in an environment with more electrical interference, I think the unshielded materials would fare less well there.
I want some of that mud!
If you can’t hear the difference, don’t pay the difference
I love seeing this story… it reminds me of 30 years ago when I worked in the telephone industry. Heard about telephone copmanies rolling out service in very very rural areas - running signals over barbed-wire fences because it was too expensive to run dedicated cables. That did degrade the signal, but it worked.
I know it’s a completely different thing entirely, but it just gave me nostalgia remembering hearing about that.
I used to be an audiophile. I spent a lot of money on speakers, and amplifiers, and DACs. But I always found the audiophile cable crowd a bit nuts. And the people that are buying audiophile versions of stuff in the digital domain are full on delusional.
I say “used to be” for two reasons. One, hearing everything does not always mean better. A lot of the time it just reveals imperfections in the recording. And depending on the space, and ambient noise, more headroom can be worse because it just pushes the quiet stuff below the background. And, you are going to have to listen to music in places that you do not have your gear and it is going to sound bad if you get too used to the good stuff. So your music life may be worse overall.
But the biggest difference is that I am older. I just cannot tell the difference as well as I used to.
But most people spend too much money on the equipment and not enough on the sources. You do not need a $20,000 setup if you are listening to badly encoded MP3 or AAC files for example.
But if you have high quality FLAC or Opus sources (or really high-end analog), you do not have to be an audiophile to tell the difference. Same with linear power supplies. You can hear the difference even if you do not spend so much money.
Like wine, audiophiles often make it more about the money they spend than the quality they are getting or the experience they are having.
That said, I can still hear well enough to know that 80% of the people that play music around me turn it up past what their amp can handle and it clips like crazy. I do not know how people listen to that.
I’m jealous of people who can’t tell the difference and have no need to buy audiophile grade SSDs
To be fair, “audiophiles” are morons.
I worked at an online shop for high end audio equipment. It was always both amusing and painful when customers asked about the sound characteristics of various power cables in the price range between $100 and $10,000 that we carried, or the same with USB and optical digital cables. Some came with the firm belief that they needed better power cables to enhance the bass of their setup. They even bought gold plated “audiophile fuses”.
will be converting to bananas tonight, thanks op
To be fair, the signal is only going through these suboptimal conductors for a very short distance.
Try wiring up your stereo with 50 feet of bananas, and you might start having problems.
There’s always music in the banana chain… or something like that
This just shows that bananas and mud are materials for excellent audio equipment. I am looking forward to my gold-plated banana.
That’s why they’re called banana plugs
The eye opening moments for me were
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Listening to $35 Porta Pro headphones and realizing you don’t need a lot of money for great sound
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ABX testing and realizing I couldn’t tell the difference AT ALL and certainly couldn’t remember the last sound bite well enough to make a real comparison anyway.
Returned them after they kept grabbing hairs
True! I love the retro look but the hair thing isn’t ideal
This was my issue with them, back in the day. I loved the sound (minus the leaking), however they were always getting caught in my hair.
The AutoEQ project is all I need for great sound.
Shit’s mindblowing with some headphones I’ve tried that need a heavy EQ. Porta Pros are fairly balanced already so not as mindblowing, but still worth at least checking out the demos on the webpage.
AutoEQ is open source. It’s just EQ settings from analyzing frequency responses of headphones.
There’s an extra “.” in your link. Here’s a corrected link for my fellow lazies: AutoEQ
Thanks! I also fixed my link.
Have you tried it?
Similar with mp3 bitrate. While I do think I noticed a difference going from 128kbps to 192kbps, anything beyond that I can’t hear a difference for.
Which clearly means I need to dump 15k into my sound setup because it maxes out somewhere between 128kbps and 192kbps!
Edit: dumb -> dump
aound -> soundWere they comfortable though?
Did they have good noise blocking? Good battery? Good delay? Microphone? Good warranty? Reparaibility? There’s so many reasons to spend a buck extra
TBF if they’re uncomfortable you don’t use them, so that’s a breaking feature.
They don’t block noise. No battery, this is mid-'80s wired tech. There’s a model with a very good microphone. Lifetime warranty. Repairable with super glue sometimes.
I did get aftermarket pads for them but they are not made for long term listening. But that is beside the point - they show you don’t need to spend $1000 to get great sound and they are only one example of that.
I actually just bought a pair of porta pros three days ago—any chance you recall what pads you upgraded to? I’ve mostly seen recommendations for Yaxi
Yep Yaxi, between that and the built in comfort slider in the headphones it’s comfortable enough
About as comfortable as plastic wrapped in a thin sponge can be
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This is about a digital signal right? Cause I’m pretty sure if I add a banana midway into my bass’ pedalboard that I’d be getting a significantly different sound. I’m tempted to try and proof myself wrong tho lmao
Everyone knows for bass you use plantain. Poser
Electronica requires fried plantains
The ones with the red label on the bag? I love those things!
Do it, imagine it sounds good, the stage trick you’d gain!
